I still stand by my advice, however, despite the record pre-orders. I continue to think that most people who own a smartphone purchases in the last year or two have no overriding reason to buy a new one so soon, and some good reasons not to. Nonetheless, it's worth asking why so many people did anyway--and why a third of Americans want one:

2) The iPhone 5 is the right decision for a certain portion of smartphone buyers--easily millions in a market of hundreds of millions of them. As I wrote before, if you have a phone that's more than a couple of years old, technology advances mean it's about time to get a new one, and the iPhone 5 is a great choice, if not the only good one.

3) The new iPhone is a clear advance over the iPhone 4S, even if it's not a revolutionary advance. It has high-speed 4G data capability, its screen is larger, and it's noticeably lighter. All good.

4) Media hype. The dirty little secret of tech media is that anything written on Apple gets a lot of readership, even if it's not positive--though it was hard to be too awfully negative on the iPhone 5. Sure, the Samsung Galaxy S III and other smartphones have more bells and whistles, but not enough more to really shame the iPhone 5, and the S III has its own shortcomings as well. And so that mostly positive iPhone coverage drove more interest in the new Apple phone, and record pre-orders. Nothing new here, but this dynamic undeniably gives Apple products a leg up on every other rival.

5) People don't always buy in an economically rational way. If you've got a 4S with an unlimited data plan, you'll be spending on a new device and paying more for data to boot if you buy the iPhone 5--a device that for all its improvements probably won't change your life, your productivity, or your mobile communications or entertainment very much. Nothing new here either, but I still contend that many of the tens of millions of people who will snap up the iPhone 5 in coming months will fit this profile. And that's not counting idiots who can't tell the difference between iPhone models.

6) I'm actually an idiot, so why would anyone take my advice anyway? OK, I don't believe that, but clearly a lot of commenters on my previous post do, so I feel obligated to mention the possibility that I don't know what I'm talking about. Besides, I wanted to provide one answer that would satisfy all those rabid Apple fanboys.